Straight Talk, Career Pathways: More Best Practices

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164  FOLLOW YOUR BLISS: CAREER PATHWAYS FOR TEACHERS

Many districts are looking for ways to provide differentiated career opportunities that address the different interests, talents, levels of experience, and career aspirations of teachers today.

Please see Straight Talk on Teaching Quality: Six Game-Changing Ideas and What to Do About Them for a complete discussion of this strategy, including the example of Cincinnati Career Ladder. Below are further examples of sites and organizations doing good work in this area.

 140 We also encourage you to submit your own examples of best practices to Joanne_Thompson@brown.edu.


 Teacher Advancement Project

TAP is a strategy to attract, retain, develop, and motivate talented people to the teaching profession by making it more attractive and rewarding to be a teacher. TAP provides teachers with:

 
  • powerful opportunities for professional growth;

  • the ability to collaborate with peers during the school day;

  • fair and rigorous classroom evaluations to identify and improve teaching skills;

  • school-based professional development led by expert master and mentor teachers to analyze student needs and identify strategies for student learning;

  • the opportunity to take on a new role as master or mentor teacher in order to earn higher salaries and advance professionally, just as in other careers, without leaving the classroom.

TAP helps teachers become the best they can be by giving them opportunities to learn better teaching strategies and holding them accountable for their performance. TAP is based on four elements, including multiple career paths, with TAP helping teachers to pursue a variety of positions throughout their careers – career, mentor, and master teacher – depending upon their interests, abilities, and accomplishments. As they move up the ranks, their qualifications, roles and responsibilities increase, and so does their compensation. This allows good teachers to advance without leaving the classroom.

137  Learn more here: www.tapsystem.org/ 


Nashville Teacher Leadership Institute


The Teacher Leadership Institute is Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools’ new initiative, among a portfolio of other teacher leadership initiatives, to provide career and leadership development opportunities to its most effective teachers in their tenure-eligible year. The Institute offers teachers a year-long curriculum focused on building leadership skills, including projects developed in conjunction with school leadership. Teachers will continue to teach their regular class schedules throughout their involvement in the Institute. The Teacher Leadership Institute is an opportunity for highly motivated and effective teachers to gain new leadership skills targeted to build the instructional capacity of the school and district. The Institute provides a leadership development opportunity that allows teachers to stay in the classroom and/or become part of the leadership pipeline of the district.

138  Learn more here: www.mnps.org/Page79503.aspx


 The Singapore Academy of Teachers

Singapore augments its strong initial preparation and induction of teachers with a highly developed performance management system, which spells out the knowledge, skills, and attitudes expected at each stage of a teacher’s career and, based on careful evaluation and intensive supports, provides a series of career tracks that teachers can pursue. These enable teachers to become mentor teachers, curriculum specialists, or principals, thereby developing talent in every component of the education system.

139  Learn more here: www.academyofsingaporeteachers.moe.gov.sg/cos/o.x?c=/ast/pagetree

 

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